


turn south from that place

by HybridComplex



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, i dont even know why im posting this, its pretty bad im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HybridComplex/pseuds/HybridComplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They keep asking if he's alright.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn south from that place

They think he’s broken. He has always been broken, snapped in two by his parents’ obsession with each other and their work, a split in his sternum later filled by the casing of the arc reactor, ice against the heat of his insides. He can’t take deep breaths and every heartbeat hurts but he’s okay because he has Pepper because she’s alive and soft and warm and never left and she makes him better, makes him human.

So there’s an urn on his bedside table with an engraving facing the wall and he has Pepper with him, his head on her chest, her thumb pressed solid against the dip at the base of his skull. He listens to the hum of her body and the hum of her voice and drags his nose over her collarbone, presses his lips to the soft jut of her sternum, touches his tongue to skin that tastes almost too clean.

She laughs, lets her head fall further against her pile of pillows, nose scrunched and eyes wrinkled and lips stretched wide. She is the most beautiful thing in the universe and he laughs with her though it feels like a sob catching in his throat and he ducks his head, slides further down on the bed, buries his face between her arm and ribs.

He falls asleep and her face falls, fingers digging hard into the damp spot he’d licked. She slips away, settles him carefully in the groove their combined weight scarred into the mattress, moves like air to the head of the bed. Her fingers shake and she reaches for the urn as she has every night, turns it to face her, drags her fingers over the engraving.

_12%._


End file.
